A/N: AHHHHH TONIGHT'S EPISODE! Idk if this is the unpopular opinion, but the last five minutes were just amazing. I have missed my CB. They really save this show.
Summary: She was soft and warm, and she held him when he cried and lay next to him when he was tired. Tired of his life, tired of who he was, tired of everything.
Disclaimer: Nothing belongs to me. All quotes belong to GG. Awesome corrections is my awesome beta's, comewhatmay.x. Everything is awesome.
Real
I know you felt it.
We were caught up in a scheme. And it was role-play.
It was real. I know you feel it right now.
It doesn't change anything.
With him, it was always so easy to find herself in dangerous waters. That shark-like predatory smirk, the way he could effortlessly get her to near him as though nothing between them had happened, and he could pick up right where he left off.
She hated it. She hated how a part of her wanted it so much and how flattered she was that he could never look away from her. She knew it wasn't normal. But she knew that something so jarring and soul shaking couldn't just be a small detour on the way to her true soul mate. She knew that was what Chuck was.
But she couldn't do it. Not now. And she wasn't even going to start thinking of a time when that would change. It was too much.
As always, however, Chuck had different ideas.
He was a predator. He knew her scent and he would stalk her to the end of the earth. A part of her wanted that so much from him. But she had to move on from this. She needed something simple. The way she always did when she had broken apart from Chuck.
He still found her.
Even when she had cast him out, it seemed fate had other plans for them. Their paths crossed, and yet again, they indulged in another scheme. It was always their weakness. Whenever a scheme came about they found themselves getting closer and closer.
It was dangerous. She had to get this done and get him away from her.
He never was cooperative.
"What are you doing?"
She knew how it had come out. She was playful in a way that she couldn't help but be when she was in his presence. Around others, she felt like a chameleon, morphing into what she was supposed to be with them. But with Chuck, it was different. She wasn't just the playful counterpart he wanted. She was herself. She was completely herself and with no competition.
And he knew that, the smug bastard.
So when she wanted to sound chastising and sneering, it didn't come out that way. She was the way she always had been with him. But he still knew. He knew she was trying to cast him out.
He just didn't care.
"Playing the part," he said smartly.
His hand was warm around hers, and for a moment, she forgot. She forgot that she was just playing and they weren't together again. It wasn't his smirk that was so comforting and so real to her. She had to convince herself. No matter how futilely, she had to convince herself that he didn't accept her for who and what she truly was. She wasn't loved the way no other man could love her.
She couldn't let him. She couldn't let him be any of those things. She was still too in love with him to move on. She was still too in love with him to forgive him.
That was what scared her. She knew how easily they could reconcile, no matter how much she needed them not to.
She knew, even if it did seem inevitable.
The way they always were.
She ripped her hand out of his stubborn grasp with a simple rebuff.
Inside she was screaming. She was screaming for him to just let her go. She could never just put her feelings for him aside. She could never push him away properly.
A part of her didn't care. And it was that part that was so like Chuck. That was what was so dangerous.
Avoiding him would be her only chance for survival.
"After you."
He was so certain that she just couldn't do it. He was motioning towards his limo and for perhaps the only time in her life, she opted for something else.
"No thanks," she said breezily. Chuck followed her eyes to the idling cab by the sidewalk.
Where the Humphreys were standing.
"You're kidding," he stated in disbelief.
Blair just shrugged and turned her back on Chuck.
"You're riding with us?" Dan asked with equal uncertainty. Blair watched as the little blonde Humphrey slid into the cab first.
"Yes," Blair said tensely.
"Why?" Dan couldn't help but ask tactlessly.
"Because I need to," Blair snapped and Dan took a step away from her. She was so tired of other's attempts at controlling her.
Starting with her feelings. She was always swept away by any passionate feeling she had and she just wished she could control herself for once.
She wished she could keep herself away from him.
Dan wasn't standing away from her anymore; instead he was watching her watch Chuck watching her.
A triangle of pairs of dark eyes stared each other down before Chuck finally, begrudgingly, entered his limo.
"Oh," Dan said.
"Don't say it like it's so easy for you to understand," Blair said, her voice reaching an edgy tone.
"No, you're right," Dan acquiesced. "You're so unique that no one can understand what it's like to be in love."
"Don't mock me, Humphrey," Blair said in distaste.
"I'm not," Dan said. "I'm just saying, it's hard to need to be near someone when you can't."
"It doesn't change anything," Blair muttered.
"How you feel about him doesn't change anything?" Dan asked.
"It just doesn't, alright?" Blair asked, finally following the peroxide blonde into the waiting taxi.
She knew it didn't make sense. She just hoped she could convince Chuck that it did.
Danger
I did the most dangerous thing I could when I said 'I love you.' But it was worth it.
More than anything, Chuck understood danger. He was born into it. He lived and breathed it. If there was one thing that he wasn't accustomed to, it was safety.
And then she had to go and ruin everything.
She was soft and warm, and she held him when he cried and lay next to him when he was tired. Tired of his life, tired of who he was, tired of everything.
That was the thing. He lived in a world of twisted irony and distinct unhappiness. The one person who made him safe was the one person who scared him.
So he ran.
He ran to Thailand, and then to Prague. Any place that was the last place she would ever show up. He asked her not to come for him and she didn't.
She loved him.
She would do what he requested.
She truly could be selfless for him. If only he could give her the same courtesy.
He was infinitely jealous and horribly cruel. But it was all for her. He had a soul. He just never used it. He only accessed his kindness when it came to her.
But his feelings were always double-edged. He could never love anyone as much as her and he could never hurt anyone as much as he did her.
Or hate.
He hated her easy grace and how she moved so flawlessly from beau to beau. A regular Scarlett O'Hara.
She was dangerous. She was dangerous only for him.
She made him feel and she made him remorseful.
He did everything in his power to push her away.
He slept around. He did illegal substances. He threw hurtful words in her face—it was the only power he had.
She fought as much as she was able, and for that, he had to give her credit.
She could hurt him too. She hurt him with her endless love, but then there was everything else. There were those words that were as cruel as his and the constant pretending that being with someone else could compare.
Especially when it came to his best friend. That was what hurt most of all. It was déjà vu of the worst kind. It was a flashback to the year before and he was even more distraught in the present.
Now he knew that he loved her.
It was even worse.
He liked the danger. Blair Waldorf was the one person who would always keep him safe.
But she did it by the most underhanded of means.
"Tell me if what you feel for me is real. Or if it's just a game."
"It's just a game."
He tried to do it.
"You know how I hate to lose."
He really did try to make things better. He tried to—for once—actually do the right thing. God knew he needed practice at it, considering everything that had transpired. He tried to be Nate. He wanted her to be happy. And if he told her to go off with his best friend, he would be partly responsible for that. Indirectly, he could make her happy.
He tried to be someone else. But then he found her stripping and leaning over him, asking for words to match feelings he had buried beneath the surface.
He almost fell for it.
He almost thought that he could actually do all of this.
"You slept with Jack?"
And then there was that.
Nothing mattered after that. He was cold and in despair at the thought of her sharing a bed with his last living blood relative.
Bed. Bathroom stall. Alley. It didn't really matter.
It still hurt more than anything.
This safety hurt him to the bone.
And he loved her.
He loved her so hard and so desperately that he grew tired. He grew tired of wandering around European countries and rebuffing the advances of anything that came across him.
He was tired of living a lie. She smirked at him from every reflection in every window. She taunted him and his nefarious habits. She tortured him with every present he bought her, as though even the hallucinations he conjured up of her knew what was really brewing inside.
He was so tired.
He wouldn't be hurt. He wouldn't be angry.
He was just Chuck Bass.
He breathed in danger as easily as her perfume. He did the most frightening and terrible thing he could think of.
"I love you too."
And there was his sweet girl.
Bravery
We're never going to be safe. So are you brave enough or aren't you?
"No matter what I feel or don't, we're not safe."
It was in that simple sentence. He knew exactly what she was feeling. He knew the exact truth. He was better at analyzing people than anyone.
Other than her, of course.
They were too evenly matched. They were too perfect for each other. There was too much fire, hurling masses of it at each other until they both combusted.
But that was how he liked it. And he knew she did too.
Even now.
That one sentence told him everything.
She was always clever that way. She was clever in the way that he was. She said everything when she said nothing.
He knew that she still loved him. The exact way he loved her. A love that was hard, bleeding and fatal.
It was the way they both loved.
It pleased him. She was rejecting him. She was being cold and going off with someone else.
But she felt something. She felt everything with him.
"Holland may have been crazy, but she was right. We're not safe."
The incredibly true statement struck him by surprise. As though that was all she really desired.
Safety. Security. He could give her that. That was what scared her. What scared her even more was that she never felt anything with anyone the way she did with him.
She was pushing him away.
But he could handle it.
He didn't want safety. He knew on the most primal level that she didn't either. She wanted the raw passion. She wanted dark and twisted. She wanted the hurt. She wanted the ecstasy. She wanted it all. Just the way he did.
They were the same.
Never in his life would he refer to himself as brave. He was a coward and he was selfish.
There was a time when he would have thought that she was the same.
But she pulled him off of ledges. She stuck her finger down his throat and she purged him of every ill feeling that he could be rid of. She held back his hair.
They weren't cowards. They were only afraid of each other. He was watching her in her ball gown as her rugged athlete came to take her away. He didn't look at Chuck twice.
This was the way it always was. It was always Chuck on that last corner of the triangle. He was always watching her, vying for her, pining for her. It didn't seem fair that after all this time she would find someone that could make her as perfect as she was when she was with him.
And he knew what it came down to it, it was easier to take that other way. It was easier to be happy with someone else than it was to be so blissfully complete when she was with him. The course of true love never did run smooth and that was what made him keep coming back.
He loved her more than he could ever love anything in existence.
He liked it this way. He liked being the way he was and he knew that she did too. He didn't want her to hide herself the way she did with anyone other than him. So for her he would be brave. For her, he would show that without safety, they could be everything.
And so he waited.